Tag Archives: Bird Watching!

So apparently, these days, in my quest to become my mother, I have slipped it into serious high gear.

My mother has this minor summertime obsession with hummingbirds. She gets a feeder, she hangs it, she watches. She and my father battle the squirrels. More sugar water. More watching. More battles.

I won’t lie, hummingbirds are fairly fascinating.

Except when my mother calls them “hummers.” Then they are horrifying.

Anyway, for some reason, this year I decided maybe I should get in on the bird feeding game (what? if Candy Crush can be a “game” then so can feeding the birds). I saw a few finches, I heard a cardinal. I had ENOUGH of winter and thought, “I’ll put a feeder up.”

But what I didn’t know was that hanging a bird feeder is step number one into the abyss of crazy bird lady.

It starts innocently enough.

I’ll put the feeder in this tree while there’s still a little snow on the ground, give those birdies something to snack on.

But it quickly progresses.

This feeder is easier for them to use and OH MY GOD SHE’S LOOKING AT ME! WE’RE FRIENDS!

Then she brings the gang.

And they all love me!!!

Then your husband is like “how much did you spend on bird seed” and you’re like

OH MY GOD I can’t talk to you right now there’s a bird IN A TREE. DO YOU SEE IT???? *runs to store for more seed*

Then suddenly it’s all

What the hell is this crap?

And

I wonder what they *really* taste like.

Followed by

OH MY GOD I can’t believe there are ducks on the pond!!! Get some bread!

And the money shot:

Official Cardinal sighting!!!!!!!

I mean, never mind that there are something like 100-million cardinals out there and they are hardly a rare sighting. LOOK!

The obsession. It almost hurts yo.

Must. Do. More.

Now, y’all know that there is not a crafty bone in my body (but there’s a dirty joke in that sentence if you look for it hard enough – bah dum dum). So I don’t generally post how-to guides for ANYTHING other than how to be awesome, which is less of a guide and really just the story of my life.

But for real – no longer satisfied just feeding the birds, I started MAKING them bird feeders.

Seriously.

You must try it. DIY Bird Feeders! Go!

Supplies

TP rolls

Peanut butter

Bird seed

Too much time on your hands

Step 1 – Rifle through the trash and find toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls. Pull off any remnants of TP and slather with peanut butter.

Step 2 – Put your seed in a bowl, then press your sticky rolls (heh) into the seed and roll it all around.

Step 4 – Place your new seed covered peanut butter sticky thingy bird feeders (copyright pending) around your yard and watch the birds yell at you and perhaps begin a dive-bombing campaign for being in their space before realizing that you are the crazy humanoid thing who keeps feeding them, then they allow it for up to 47 seconds (and no longer).

That’s it! Now just sit around and watch because you literally have nothing else to do find time in your busy schedule to check on the feeders from time to time and watch your birds enjoy!

Bonus! If you put them on the ends of really delicate branches, the birds can get to them, but the squirrels fall to the ground as they try. It’s hil-AR-i-ous. For a minute or two. But yeah sooner or later the squirrels will figure out how to get them and just take them and run but still it was nice to watch for a minute.

Bonus times two — check out my supreme laziness turned “hey not a bad idea” out there:

I wanted a bird bath, but they are SPENDY, and if they are not, they are CHEAP and CRAP. So I put this pie plate from the dollar store in a plant stand I already had, put some rocks in it so it wouldn’t blow away, and VOILA! Bird bath.

I’m a freaking genius. Didn’t even see that at my mother’s house first.

Now of course, the downfall of my little TP roll feeders is that I couldn’t get close enough to one with a bird on it without said bird, well, flipping me the bird. So my enjoyment was limited to this:

Can you see him? It’s a brown headed cowbird. What? That’s a REAL THING.